Global Warming Drives Increasing Tropical Cyclone-Induced U.S. Electric
Power Outage Risk
Abstract
While power outages caused by tropical cyclones (TCs) already pose a
great threat to coastal communities, how—and why—these risks
will change in a warming climate is poorly understood. To address this
need, we develop a robust machine learning model to capture TC-induced
power outage risk. When applied to 900,000 synthetic TCs downscaled from
simulated historical and future climate conditions under a strong
warming scenario, we find outage risk in the United States and Puerto
Rico is expected to increase broadly by the end of the century, with
some states seeing increases of 60% and higher. Further, we discover
that rising rainfall rates will play an increasingly important role in
TC-induced power outage risk as the climate changes, explaining more
than 50% of the projected change in risk in some regions. These
insights are important for guiding decision-makers in their future
outage risk investment and mitigation plans.